I was sitting in a hotel room in Graz, holding a deck of cards, when the question hit me. Not a magic question. Not a technique question. Not a question about method or handling or presentation. A question about the object itself.
What is the most interesting thing about a deck of cards?
I had been holding decks of cards almost every day for years at that point. I practiced with them in hotel rooms across Austria. I performed with them at corporate events and keynotes. I carried one in my jacket pocket the way some people carry a phone charger — always there, always within reach, a tool and a companion. And in all that time, I had never once asked what was interesting about the object itself.
The question came from Pete McCabe’s Scripting Magic, from an exercise he calls the “Most Interesting Thing” exercise — which I think of as the MIT exercise, because I like acronyms and because the exercise genuinely feels like a graduate-level investigation into objects you thought you already understood. The exercise is deceptively simple: take any prop you use in your show and ask, “What is the most interesting thing about this object?” Not what you can do with it. Not what magic it enables. What is interesting about the object itself, as an object, in the world?
That evening in Graz, I put the deck on the desk, opened my notebook, and started writing.
The Deck of Cards
A deck of playing cards. Fifty-two unique items, plus jokers, organized into four suits. Used for games, gambling, fortune-telling, cardistry, magic, solitaire, building houses, and killing time. Compact enough to fit in a pocket. Complex enough to generate more possible arrangements than there are atoms in the observable universe — a fact that still astonishes me every time I think about it. A technology that has remained fundamentally unchanged for over six hundred years. Carried by soldiers in trenches, prisoners in cells, sailors on ships, travelers in hotel rooms.
I had never said any of this on stage. In my card routines, the deck was invisible in plain sight — present as a prop, absent as an object. I talked about the trick. I talked about the spectator’s choice. I talked about the impossibility of what was about to happen. I never talked about the deck. It was infrastructure, like the table it sat on. Necessary but unremarked upon.
And that, I realized, was a missed opportunity of enormous proportions. Because the deck of cards is one of the most interesting objects in human history, and I was using it like a screwdriver — functionally, efficiently, without any awareness of its intrinsic fascination.
The Exercise Applied
Over the next several weeks, I ran the MIT exercise on every prop in my show. Each session followed the same format: place the prop on the desk, open the notebook, and write down everything interesting about the object itself. Not its function in my routine. Not its magical potential. Its inherent interestingness.
An envelope. What is interesting about an envelope? It is a container designed specifically for concealment. Its entire purpose is to hold something out of sight. It has a seal — a mechanism for making concealment official and verifiable. Opening an envelope is a tiny ritual of revelation. We get excited when we receive envelopes, even now, in an age when almost everything arrives digitally. There is anticipation built into the object itself: an envelope is a promise that something is inside, waiting to be discovered.
When I wrote this down, I immediately saw how it applied to my prediction routine. I had been using an envelope as a container — a functional prop that held a piece of paper. But the envelope is not just a container. It is a symbol of concealment, anticipation, and revelation. The envelope itself tells a story. And I had been ignoring that story entirely.
A rope. What is interesting about a rope? It connects things. It binds. It is one of the oldest technologies in human history — older than writing, older than pottery, possibly older than language itself. Rope is flexible but strong. It can be tied into knots that are nearly impossible to undo, or into knots that release with a single pull. Rope is trust made physical: when you tie something with a rope, you are creating a bond that depends on the integrity of the material and the skill of the knot.
A coin. What is interesting about a coin? It represents value by collective agreement. It is worth something only because we all agree it is worth something. A coin is a physical instantiation of trust — trust in a government, trust in an economy, trust in the shared fiction that this small disc of metal can be exchanged for food, shelter, or a nice bottle of wine. Coins have faces on them — the faces of rulers, leaders, symbols of authority. Every coin is a tiny portrait carried in millions of pockets.
A piece of paper. What is interesting about a piece of paper? It is potential. A blank sheet of paper could become anything — a contract, a love letter, a will, a confession, a work of art, a shopping list. It is the most democratic creative medium in existence: cheap, available, and responsive to any mark you choose to make on it. Paper is fragile. Paper burns. Paper tears. And yet paper has preserved human knowledge for two thousand years.
What Magicians Talk About vs. What Objects Are About
Here is what struck me most forcefully: the things I had been saying about my props on stage were entirely about what the props did in the context of the trick. “I have an envelope here with a prediction inside.” “Here is a perfectly ordinary deck of cards.” “I need a coin — does anyone have a coin?”
These statements reduce rich, fascinating objects to functional instruments. They strip the object of its history, its symbolism, its cultural weight, and its inherent drama. They turn a deck of cards — fifty-two unique items with six hundred years of history and more possible arrangements than atoms in the universe — into “a deck of cards.” They turn an envelope — a container specifically designed for concealment and revelation — into “an envelope with something inside.”
The MIT exercise revealed that I had been performing with interesting objects and saying uninteresting things about them. The objects were doing heavy lifting that I was not acknowledging. Every prop in my show carried centuries of cultural association, and I was treating them like disposable stage furniture.
The Application
Changing this required subtlety. I did not want to turn my show into a history lecture. Nobody comes to a corporate keynote in Salzburg to hear about the origins of playing cards. But a single sentence — one well-crafted observation about the object itself — can transform the audience’s relationship with the prop and, by extension, with the routine.
In my card routine, I added one line near the beginning. Not a history lesson. Not an encyclopedia entry. Just an observation that took about five seconds to deliver and that reframed the deck from a prop to an object worth paying attention to. The line acknowledged the deck as something with its own story, its own weight, its own significance. And the audience responded differently to the rest of the routine because they were now seeing the deck as something more than a magician’s tool.
In my prediction routine, I changed how I introduced the envelope. Instead of treating it as a container, I treated it as a character in the story. The envelope had been sealed before the show. It had been sitting there, holding its secret, waiting. The envelope was patient. The envelope knew something we did not. Two sentences turned a prop introduction into a moment of anticipation that made the eventual opening more dramatic.
These changes were small in terms of word count. A sentence here. A phrase there. But the cumulative effect was significant. The show started to feel like it existed in a world of meaningful objects rather than functional props. The props stopped being invisible and started being interesting.
The Innovation Connection
As a strategy and innovation consultant, I recognized something in this exercise that connected directly to my professional work. In innovation, there is a concept called “jobs to be done” — the idea that customers do not buy products; they hire products to do a job. A drill is hired to make holes. A milkshake is hired to make a boring commute less boring.
But the most successful products transcend their functional job and become meaningful objects. An iPhone does not just make calls. A Moleskine notebook does not just hold notes. A particular watch does not just tell time. These objects carry associations, identities, stories. The companies that understand this — that understand the difference between an object’s function and an object’s meaning — are the companies that build brands people are passionate about.
Magic props work the same way. A deck of cards functions as a tool for performing card tricks. But a deck of cards means something far richer than that. And when you acknowledge that meaning — even briefly, even in a single sentence — you elevate the routine from a demonstration of skill to an experience that operates on multiple levels.
The MIT exercise is, at its core, an exercise in seeing what is already there. The interesting things about your props are not invented. They are discovered. The history, the symbolism, the cultural weight, the inherent drama — these are real properties of real objects. You do not have to make them up. You just have to notice them.
The Full Inventory
I now run the MIT exercise every time a new prop enters my show. Before I write a single word of script, before I rehearse a single moment, I sit with the object and ask: what is the most interesting thing about this?
The answers have surprised me consistently. A marker is interesting because it makes marks that are visible from a distance, transforming private thought into public statement. A notepad is interesting because it is a space specifically designated for thoughts that might not survive long enough to matter. A blindfold is interesting because it creates a specific kind of vulnerability — the vulnerability of someone who chooses to give up their most dominant sense. A rubber band is interesting because it stores energy — it remembers its original shape and constantly tries to return to it.
Every one of these observations has generated presentation ideas. Not all of them ended up in the final script. Some were too heavy, too philosophical, too tangential to the routine’s core theme. But each one deepened my understanding of the object and gave me options I would not have had otherwise.
The Rule I Follow
My rule now is simple: if I cannot say something genuinely interesting about a prop — something that has nothing to do with magic, something that would be interesting even if the trick did not exist — then I do not understand the prop well enough to perform with it.
This might sound extreme. It is. But consider what it means in practice. It means that every prop in my show is an object I have thought about, researched, and found genuinely fascinating. It means that when I hold a deck of cards on stage, I am holding something I find interesting for reasons that have nothing to do with the trick I am about to perform. And that genuine interest — that authentic fascination with the object itself — comes through in my handling, my language, my attitude.
Audiences can feel when a performer cares about what they are holding. They can feel when an object is treated with respect and curiosity rather than as a disposable means to an end. The MIT exercise does not teach you a technique. It teaches you a way of seeing. And the way you see your props determines the way your audience sees them.
McCabe gave me the exercise. The objects gave me the answers. All I had to do was sit in a hotel room, put the prop on the desk, and ask the simplest question in the world: what is the most interesting thing about this?
The answer was always there. I had just never thought to ask.